A Quote by Matthew Desmond
If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.
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Just as incarceration has come to define the lives of low-income black men, eviction is defining the lives of low-income black women.
I try to speak my points of view about black America, and how I feel about black men and the role that black men should play in their lives with their children and in their lives with their women.
They wanted black women to conform to the gender norms set by white society. They wanted to be recognized as 'men,' as patriarchs, by other men, including white men. Yet they could not assume this position if black women were not willing to conform to prevailing sexist gender norms. Many black women who has endured white-supremacist patriarchal domination during slavery did not want to be dominated by black men after manumission.
Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.
Growing up, there was this explosion of B television. 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air,' you have 'Family Matters,' 'A Different World.' I had examples - of black children, black families, black women, black men - that represented who I was.
Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society.
There are many things that black women can continue to do to help black folk. First, black women have historically been among the most vocal advocates for equality in our community. We must take full advantage of such courage by continuing to combat the sexism in our communities. Black women, whether in church, or hip-hop, don't receive their just due. Second, when black women are in charge of child-rearing, they must make ever so sure to raise black children who respect both men and women, and who root out the malevolent beliefs about women that shatter our culture.
I've gotten a firsthand view at the destruction that black men and black women not being able to stay and build healthy relationships has had on the black family and black children.
I was brought up in black neighborhoods in South Baltimore. And we really felt like we were very black. We acted black and we spoke black. When I was a kid growing up, where I came from, it was hip to be black. To be white was kind of square.
I have this problem where it's like'I can never stop thinking. For instance, I find myself obsessing over the treatment of black women and girls by black men'the fact that black men have a special prejudice against black women and generally don't protect them or attempt to understand them, and I cry an awful lot about that.
We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community.
I liked the fact that there were so many different representations of black women and black men in the movie. It wasn't like we all had the same agenda.
Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.
The issue of redistribution of resources and wealth needs to resolved systemically, but in the meantime but there are individual spots you can occupy. There are things that you can do on a daily basis that will make a difference in moving the needle in individual lives. When we look at the mentoring of young black kids, for instance, the number-one mentor group is white women. I think after that maybe it's black women, and then white men, and then black men. We can make all kinds of arguments about that.
...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.
When I was growing up, there was no one. There were very few black women in tech; there were very few black women in the fashion game. We didn't have our Grace Jones - Grace Jones was before my time. We didn't really have a lot of black women in electronic and punk who were celebrated in the same levels as, say, your big mega-superstars.
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